In many of these areas Italians would be later replaced by immigrants while at the same time manufacturing would be outsourced to North Africa, to East Europe and even to Asia and Africa. The changes above marked the triumph of submerged, “postmodern” economies causing the proliferation everywhere. This “second great transformation” of economic relations is mainly responsible for the growing demand for new individuals who can be enslaved, i.e., immigrants to be relegated to a new legally precarious status, or worse yet to the status of a non person, devoid of rights. This is how the “postmodern” economic boom came to be, with its reliance on the multiplication of uncontrolled interweaving of legal, illegal and criminal activities in all fields, construction speculation, corruption, tax evasion, pollution, and security based citizen mobilizations. Such mobilizations ignore a tragic lack of safety in the work places and in the dwellings of marginalized sectors of the population while insisting on the submission of the newly enslaved based on ethnicity. This model of development tends to destroy any economic, social, political and cultural configuration that fails to conform to the neo-liberal model. It creates mostly ephemeral products destined to ensure ever increasing profits and ignores posterity, i.e., the future. It treats young people who refuse to conform to the neo-liberal credo as “inconvenient posterity” or “the dregs of society”. Under neo-liberal management, expenditures of the political organization of society are to be allocated mostly for the privatization and maximization of profits to the detriment of the res publica and the future (suffice it to think of the management of the national health system, public works, transportation as well as the general attacks against the public sector, resulting in raids against utilities, waste management, public instruction, university and research). This is the neo-liberal model exported all over the world by the neoconservative managers of globalization, especially in medium and large cities. The outcome is a tendency towards homologation (uniformity) achieved through semi-standardized operations that rarely encounter any social and political opposition. The lack of energetic response is due to the erosion of collective action, the weakness of trade unions, and the almost complete disappearance of the left and truly democratic liberals.
The Neo-liberal City
Today it is impossible to find specific features that set cities of one continent apart from those of the others. The uniformity of architectural design and materials commonly used in construction are among the factors that intensify this homologation, along with the discourses on the “postmodern” city. These discourses emphasize the cult of decorum, morality and hygiene, all encompassed within an obsessive demand for security, making today’s cities similar to the cities of European colonialists. Whoever visits the different cities on the Mediterranean sea will find more or less the same architectural innovations and city planning features typical of European or North American cities, i.e., big Plexiglas skyscrapers, large parking lots or structures, new subway and light-rail systems, “postmodern” fortified districts (like the gated communities), camera surveillance everywhere, an ever increasing number of public and private guards and police, the obsessive presence of screens offering advertising or scaffolding used as billboards that are intentionally kept well after the facades have been refurbished for the sake of continuing advertising , new large public works or “installations” that aim to be ever more shocking, malls and shopping centers, boutiques, bars, restaurants, multi-screen cinemas, discotheques, pubs and
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Mediterranean Cities, Neo-Liberal Drift & Revolts. Salvatore Palidda